Ridiculous death due, in my opinion, to flawed design.

[fizzix]

...roguelikes are inexplicably wedded to hardcore trial and error gameplay and permadeath. Non-indie developers persistently refuse to even consider putting out anything with system requirements suited to casual gaming except grindfest MMOs.

Angband has cheat-death and know-all options. Turning these on make it an RPG for the casual gamer. I'm a big proponent of save-scumming for new players who want to experience what Angband has to offer. That's how I started.

[Bostock]

learnean

Freudwin award for fyonn!

[Timo Pietilä]

Freudwin award for fyonn!

That's how I tend to read it too. I had to make a mental note to myself that it is in fact Lernaean, and not Learnean.

[Derakon]

The Learnean Hydra breathes knowledge. -more-
You realize that trying to melee a Nightmare without confusion resistance is a bad idea. -more-
You consider swapping out that Ring of Protection (+18) for a Ring of Constitution. -more-
You discover your stock of Potions of Cure Critical Wounds is rather low.

[Whelk]

Haha. Breathe Knowledge would be awesome. It could inflict you with Confusion if you're too low level, or if your Intelligence or Wisdom stats are too low.

[fyonn]

Freudwin award for fyonn!

Yeah, I keep misspelling it like that and then wondering why I can't find it in the spoilers

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The only excuse left is that Angband is a niche game for crazy people who want their games to generate rather than relieve stress. That's all well and good, but it doesn't excuse looking down on casual gamers. Especially when there's nothing well publicized in the RPG genre that combines casual gameplay with casual system requirements.

I think that's overstating things. Angband's appeal is, IMO, similar to forms of solitaire that require thinking and skill (and of course some luck) to win. Get a bad hand, or make a mistake? Oops. Move along, try again.

[Derakon]

One possibility would be to have a set of hints that get displayed e.g. when moving between levels, which would explain some of the more obscure parts of Angband. Many more complicated modern games do this -- e.g. Civilization IV (haven't played V) does this during worldgen. Of course, Angband doesn't really have any "down time" when such displays would be minimally obtrusive.

[Nomad]

One possibility would be to have a set of hints that get displayed e.g. when moving between levels, which would explain some of the more obscure parts of Angband. Many more complicated modern games do this -- e.g. Civilization IV (haven't played V) does this during worldgen. Of course, Angband doesn't really have any "down time" when such displays would be minimally obtrusive.

How about giving the player a hint every time they kill a unique? Make it a menu option so that experienced players can turn it off if they want, but hopefully for newbies it would be infrequent enough to not get too annoying, and function as a sort of unlocked achievement. You could even go totally wild and assign each unique its own specific hint - kill them all to collect the set! - but in practical terms, picking one semi-randomly based on level like with drops is probably the way to go. Early level uniques 'drop' hints like "Use the shift key to run", a bit further on you get tips on which abilities/resistances to prioritize, and so forth.

[bio_hazard]

Why make it so hard? Add an option to the stores to provide hints (like ToME tavern rumors). There's no reason to withhold stuff like how to run, how to set up term windows, etc.

I'd rather see monster knowledge as an achievement-type award. Kill a unique native to DLX, get full knowledge of all non-unique monsters native to X+1

[Derakon]

Any system designed to provide knowledge to the player that experienced players already have should a) be optional, and b) be accessible if the player wants it to be. Most programs with random hints allow you to page through them freely; I see no reason to gate basic (but nonobvious) knowledge on killing uniques. I suggested changing dungeon levels because it's an action you have to do to play the game and it's something you do often enough that a fair amount of knowledge can be dispensed this way. Staircases also often come at natural breaks in the action.

bio_hazard: interesting idea, but the connection of uniques with monster memory seems tenuous. You could have scrolls of monster knowledge drop that fill in your monster memory when you read them, instead. They'd supplement rods of probing; on the one hand, you don't have to get into LOS of the monster beforehand to get the knowledge, but on the other hand you won't necessarily get info on the monster you want. They should only drop for monsters you haven't seen before (to prevent creation of junk), should have negligible resale value, and ideally cover multiple monsters in one shot.

[bio_hazard]

ToME sort of had what you mention- 10 (11?) tomes with lists of monsters and brief descriptions. As I recall they didn't add to monster memory though in that case though- they were pretty useless.

I suppose they could be organized by depth (as they were in ToME), by theme (e.g. all d and D, all o T and O, etc), or just a random assortment of monsters not currently in monster memory.

[Derakon]

Yeah, ToME's listings were pretty pointless; IIRC all they had was vague descriptions of a monster's depth, health, and "danger rating", which were all generated automatically from the edit files.

Depth or letter would seem to be the obvious themes for monsters; I'd lean towards the latter so we could have a "Tome of Orcs" and a "Tome of Zephyr Hounds".

[Timo Pietilä]

Why make it so hard? Add an option to the stores to provide hints (like ToME tavern rumors). There's no reason to withhold stuff like how to run, how to set up term windows, etc.

I'd rather see monster knowledge as an achievement-type award. Kill a unique native to DLX, get full knowledge of all non-unique monsters native to X+1

If the monsters are the problem for newbies then we need only one hint: Read the monster description.

If problem is that person doesn't know how to play then: read the help-files.

Then we just need to make sure that those two places are up to date and perform the task they are meant to do. Running is mentioned in help-files (more than once), but I'm not sure they tell anything about term-windows. Monster description should give hints about what the monster is and what it can do.

Maybe we could do a "pseudo-ID" for unknown monsters in sight (including detection and ESP). Like how fast it moves is immediately obvious as soon as it moves, monster HP "estimates", something like that.

[Djabanete]

Having a "game tips" service for free in the General Store mightn't be a bad idea. (Unlike "rumours", game tips should always be true!)

When you're learning a game, there's a certain appeal to having the knowledge come from within the game itself, rather than having to plow through manuals before even getting started.